Byregot the Builder, CAN WE FIX IT?!

The place where literal-ghost goes to yell about FFXIV. Plays (many alts) on the Balmung server and also does art. Check out my characters' Caard

[literalghost]

Slight adjustment to my commission post. I got married last autumn, so some things in my client examples will be signed with my maiden name, and others with my married name. Also the change to Discord's usernames made the old one incorrect. It's literalghost across the board now!

For more details and examples of client work, please check out https://literal-ghost.carrd.co

[ttenri]

🌙

[tritoch]

emet-selch's role in the garlean empire is one of the best and funniest retcons ffxiv has ever implemented because all of a sudden almost every setting detail that didn't quite add up now works because an evil wizard did it.

like the nael thing goes from "what do you mean a young garlean officer's sister disappeared and father died in what was widely assumed to be an act of patricide, and then he publicly executed his house's officers and guards, and solus zos galvus said 'hang on, put THAT GUY in charge of a legion NOW'? how does that make any sense?" to "oooooh yeah. yeah he would do that."

[mythiclings]

[whitherwanderer]

Pride Backlighting Tutorial

A few people have shown interest in replicating the pride backlighting I did, so hey, here’s a quick tutorial below the cut.

Enjoy, and happy Pride Month. 🏳️‍🌈

STEP 1 — SETUP

First thing you’ll want to do is find a suitably dark background to bounce the light off of. I use the White Screen housing item dyed Soot Black, available from the Housing Merchant or Apartment Merchant in any of the housing zones for 3000 gil.

I line up 2-3 of them for coverage, but one will do if you're trying to be frugal.

If you don’t have an apartment or an FC room to use, try asking friends, FC mates, or even folks you share a Discord server with. You might even find someone who already has a studio space set up and is willing to let you use it!

Lighting in your studio space should be 0 (though you might have success at 1 as well), so make sure to adjust that or ask the studio owner if they can make that change before you start posing.

STEP 2 — GPOSE

Position your character(s) just a little ways back from the edge of the screen. You want some space between them and the screen so that the lighting can float there without casting a weird circle on the wall.

Hop into /gpose and bump up the “Manual brightness adjustment” to about 120 or whatever level allows you to see your character well enough to pose them. Pose to your heart's content.

STEP 3 — LIGHTS

Here’s the fun part. In the Light tab of the Gpose menu, switch all of your Light sources to Type 1, which has the shortest falloff radius (meaning it doesn't reach as far as Type 2 or 3). I also set all of my lights to one strong color to differentiate them while I worked on lighting—red, green, and blue, all maxed out at 255 (for now).

Swing your camera (still on all default settings) around to your character’s back and up above their head a little ways. This is where Light 1 (red) will go.

Now pan your camera down at about mid-back height and set Light 2 (green) there.

Pan your camera down one last time until you have a nice shot of your character’s butt and set Light 3 (blue).

If you have "circles" that appear on the background behind your character, your lights are little too close to the backdrop. Pull your camera in towards your character just a bit more to reposition your lights. I recommend doing this at a Camera Position setting of 100 so that your sense of "close" and "far" aren't skewed by extreme Field of View (FOV). You can adjust that once you're happy with light positions.

Spin your camera back around and enjoy this nice little macaw-colored gradient.

STEP 4 — CAMERA

Set your camera angle.

The way FFIXV’s lighting works is partially dependent on how much light is in a shot. It will adjust a lot like your eyes do when you’re entering a dark room from a bright room, or vice versa. Your zoom level and camera angle are going to directly affect the lighting, so set this before you start messing with light strength and color. Sometimes this means weaker lighting will actually light your character better.

I ended up bringing my lights down to around ~160 and boosted the "Manual brightness adjustment" up quite a bit to get lighting I was happier with.

For a straightforward vertical shot, I like to have my Camera Position/FOV at 200 and of course my rotation is set to 90. Zoom in or out as needed. Remember to save your camera angle if you plan to pan around and fix things!

STEP 5 — COLOR

Make it ~queer~.

Take your flag of choice and pick out 2-3 “main” hues. Generally these will be the strongest hues in the flag, if not the only ones. Some flags, like the Pride/Progress/Intersex-Inclusive flag itself, are difficult to replicate for the sheer number of colors that are in it. You can loosely represent a rainbow with some adjustment to the RGB colors, if you’re determined to have a whole rainbow in there.

Shader Note: I recommend picking a shader preset that doesn’t mess too much with color so that colors are represented correctly. You may need to adjust light strength and “Manual brightness adjustment” to be compatible with your preset of choice. Bloom will also heavily affect the way your colors are showing up, so you may need to tone down the bloom FX or toggle it off entirely. This all depends on your preset, however.

If you’re not into RGB math, here are some cheat sheets! Not every flag is represented here of course, but I tried to cover as many colors as I could so that you could grab a color from another flag as needed! Please note that colors will need some adjustment for your own screenshot, presets, and preferences.

And that’s it, y’all! 🏳️‍🌈

(Open this image up in a new tab for more detail.)

These were taken using a heavily customized shader for that nice glowy effect.

[chaobunnyarts]

Vrtra of Radz-at-Han

[hylfysting]

[pom-friend]

YOU KNOW WHAT, forget my previous tags on this; I will take a spotify playlist, I will take a Youtube mix, I will take anything on this good green earth but a link to a Suno Slop AI generated shit list.

[7dmom]

i can sense that I am not the only warrior of light in this popeyes bathroom

[canteatea]

Wakeywakey

[rocketbirdie]

unstoppable force meets immovable object

[theninthlaw]

FRAY

[deadontheweb3]

[hylfysting]

[marronbunnie]

the final day

[jrpgdog]

[sexybritishllama]

i love environmental storytelling

[voidsentprinces]

THOUGHT YOU WERE SAFE IN AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER!? FUCK OFF! ITS VIBE CHECKING TIME!

.

SHOW HOLE!

Wonder what this will be like in Chaotic...

SHOW HOLE!

Wait do we have an ARCHER IN OUR PARTY!?

SHOW HOLE!

Holyholyholyholyholyholyholyholyholyholyholyholyholyholyholyholyholyholyholy

SHOW HOLE!

I mean SERIOUSLY why the FUCK did my Portrait RESET!?

SHOW HOLE!

And that is why Lalafell should be able to ride on player's shoulders.

SHOW HOLE!

HMPH! How very glib...and do you believe in Eorzea?

Voting ended onOct 8, 2024